Himalayan Journals, vol 1 - J. D. Hooker (polar express read aloud txt) 📗

Illustration—LOOKING ACROSS YANGMA VALLEY.

Nango is about 18,000 feet high; it is the next lofty mountain of the Kinchinjunga group to the west of Junnoo, and I doubt if any equally high peak occurs again for some distance further west in Nepal. Facing the Yangma valley, it presents a beautiful range of precipices of black rock, capped with a thick crust of snow: below the cliffs the snow again appears continuously and very steep, for 2000 to 3000 feet downwards, where it terminates in glaciers that descend to 14,000 feet. The steepest snowbeds appear cut into vertical ridges, whence the whole snowy face is—as it were—crimped in perpendicular, closely-set, zigzag lines, doubtless caused by the melting process, which furrows the surface of the snow into channels by which the water is carried off: the effect is very beautiful, but impossible to represent on paper, from the extreme delicacy of the shadows, and at the same time the perfect definition and precision of the outlines.

Towards the head of the lake, its bed was quite dry and gravelly, and the river formed a broad delta over it: the terraces here were perhaps 100 feet above its level, those at the lower end not nearly so much. Beyond the lake, the river became again a violent torrent, rushing in a deep chasm, till we arrived at the fork of the valley, where we once more met with numerous dry lake-beds, with terraces high up on the mountain sides.

In the afternoon we reached the village of Yangma, a miserable collection of 200 to 300 stone huts, nestling under the steep south-east flank of a lofty, flat-topped terrace, laden with gigantic glacial boulders, and projecting southward from a snowy mountain which divides the valley. We encamped on the flat under the village, amongst some stone dykes, enclosing cultivated fields. One arm of the valley runs hence N.N.E. amongst snowy mountains, and appeared quite full of moraines; the other, or continuation of the Yangma, runs W.N.W., and leads to the Kanglachem pass.

Near our camp (of which the elevation was 13,500 feet), radishes, barley, wheat, potatos, and turnips, were cultivated as summer crops, and we even saw some on the top of the terrace, 400 feet above our camp, or nearly 14,000 feet above the sea; these were grown in small fields cleared of stones, and protected by dykes.

The scenery, though dismal, (no juniper even attaining this elevation,) was full of interest and grandeur, from the number and variety of snowy peaks and glaciers all around the elevated horizon; the ancient lake-beds, now green or brown with scanty vegetation, the vast moraines, the ridges of glacial debris, the flat terraces, marking, as it were with parallel roads, the bluff sides of the mountains, the enormous boulders perched upon them, and strewed everywhere around, the little Boodhist monuments of quaint, picturesque shapes, decorated with poles and banners, the many-coloured dresses of the people, the brilliant blue of the cloudless heaven by day, the depth of its blackness by night, heightened by the light of the stars, that blaze and twinkle with a lustre unknown in less lofty regions: all these were subjects for contemplation, rendered more impressive by the stillness of the atmosphere, and the silence that reigned around. The village seemed buried in repose throughout the day: the inhabitants had already hybernated, their crops were stored, the curd made and dried, the passes closed, the soil frozen, the winter’s stock of fuel housed, and the people had retired into the caverns of their half subterranean houses, to sleep, spin wool, and think of Boodh, if of anything at all, the dead, long winter through. The yaks alone can find anything to do: so long as any vegetation remains they roam and eat it, still yielding milk, which the women take morning and evening, when their shrill whistle and cries are heard for a few minutes, as they call the grunting animals. No other sounds, save the harsh roar and hollow echo of the falling rock, glacier, or snowbed, disturbed the perfect silence of the day or night.* [Snow covers the ground at Yangma from December till April, and the falls are said to be very heavy, at times amounting to 12 feet in depth.]

I had taken three days’ food to Yangma, and stayed there as long as it lasted: the rest of my provisions I had left below the first moraine, where a lateral valley leads east over the Nango pass to the Kambachen valley, which lay on the route back to Sikkim.

I was premature in complaining of my Wallanchoon tents, those provided for me at Yangma being infinitely worse, mere rags, around which I piled sods as a defence from the insidious piercing night-wind that descended from the northern glaciers in calm, but most keen, breezes. There was no food to be procured in the village, except a little watery milk, and a few small watery potatos.

The latter have only very recently been introduced amongst the Tibetans, from the English garden at the Nepalese capital, I believe, and their culture has not spread in these regions further east than Kinchinjunga, but they will very soon penetrate into Tibet from Dorjiling, or eastward from Nepal. My private stock of provisions —consisting chiefly of preserved meats from my kind friend Mr. Hodgson—had fallen very low; and I here found to my dismay that of four remaining two-pound cases, provided as meat, three contained prunes, and one “dindon aux truffes!” Never did luxuries come more inopportunely; however the greasy French viand served for many a future meal as sauce to help me to bolt my rice, and according to the theory of chemists, to supply animal heat in these frigid regions.

As for my people, they were not accustomed to much animal food; two pounds of rice, with ghee and chilis, forming their common diet under cold and fatigue. The poorer Tibetans, especially, who undergo great privation and toil, live almost wholly on barley-meal, with tea, and a very little butter and salt: this is not only the case with those amongst whom I mixed so much, but is also mentioned by MM. Huc and Gabet, as having been observed by them in other parts of Tibet.

On the 1st of December I visited the village and terrace, and proceeded to the head of the Yangma valley, in order to ascend the Kanglachem pass as far as practicable. The houses are low, built of stone, of no particular shape, and are clustered in groups against the steep face of the terrace; filthy lanes wind amongst them, so narrow, that if you are not too tall, you look into the slits of windows on either hand, by turning your head, and feel the noisome warm air in whiffs against your face. Glacial boulders lie scattered throughout the village, around and beneath the clusters of houses, from which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the native rock.

I entered one house by a narrow low door through walls four feet thick, and found myself in an apartment full of wool, juniper-wood, and dried dung for fuel: no one lived in the lower story, which was quite dark, and as I stood in it my head was in the upper, to which I ascended by a notched pole (like that in the picture of a Kamschatk house in Cook’s voyage), and went into a small low room. The inmates looked half asleep, they were intolerably indolent and filthy, and were employed in spinning wool and smoking. A hole in the wall of the upper apartment led me on to the stone roof of the neighbouring house, from which I passed to the top of a glacial boulder, descending thence by rude steps to the narrow alley. Wishing to see as much as I could, I was led on a winding course through, in and out, and over the tops of the houses of the village, which alternately reminded me of a stone quarry or gravel pit, and gipsies living in old lime-kilns; and of all sorts of odd places that are turned to account as human habitations.

From the village I ascended to the top of the terrace, which is a perfectly level, sandy, triangular plain, pointing down the valley at the fork of the latter, and abutting against the flank of a steep, rocky, snow-topped mountain to the northward. Its length is probably half a mile from north to south, but it runs for two miles westward up the valley, gradually contracting. The surface, though level, is very uneven, being worn into hollows, and presenting ridges and hillocks of blown sand and gravel, with small black tufts of rhododendron.

Enormous boulders of gneiss and granite were scattered over the surface; one of the ordinary size, which I measured, was seventy feet in girth, and fifteen feet above the ground, into which it had partly sunk. From the southern pointed end I took sketches of the opposite flanks of the valleys east and west. The river was about 400 feet below me, and flowed in a little flat lake-bed; other terraces skirted it, cut out, as it were, from the side of that I was on. On the opposite flank of the valley were several superimposed terraces, of which the highest appeared to tally with the level I occupied, and the lowest was raised very little above the river; none were continuous for any distance, but the upper one in particular, could be most conspicuously traced up and down the main valley, whilst, on looking across to the eastern valley, a much higher, but less distinctly marked one appeared on it. The road to the pass lay west-north-west up the north bank of the Yangma river, on the great terrace; for two miles it was nearly level along the gradually narrowing shelf, at times dipping into the steep gulleys formed by lateral torrents from the mountains; and as the terrace disappeared, or melted, as it were, into the rising floor of the valley, the path descended upon the lower and smaller shelf.

Illustration—DIAGRAM OF THE GLACIAL TERRACES AT THE FORK OF THE

YANGA VALLEY.

We came suddenly upon a flock of gigantic wild sheep, feeding on scanty tufts of dried sedge and grass; there were twenty-five of these enormous animals, of whose dimensions the term sheep gives no idea: they are very long-legged, stand as high as a calf, and have immense horns, so large that the fox is said to take up his abode in their hollows, when detached and bleaching, on the barren mountains of Tibet. Though very wild, I am sure I could easily have killed a couple had I had my gun, but I had found it necessary to reduce my party so uncompromisingly, that I could not afford a man both for my gun and instruments, and had sent the former back to Dorjiling, with Mr. Hodgson’s bird-stuffers, who had broken one of theirs. Travelling without fire-arms sounds strange in India, but in these regions animal life is very rare, game is only procured with much hunting and trouble, and to come within shot of a flock of wild sheep was a contingency I never contemplated. Considering how very short we were of any food, and quite out of animal diet, I could not but bitterly regret the want of a gun, but consoled myself by reflecting that the instruments were still more urgently required to enable me to survey this extremely interesting valley. As it was, the great beasts trotted off, and turned to tantalise me by grazing within an easy stalking distance. We saw several other flocks, of thirty to forty, during the day, but never, either on this or any future occasion, within shot. The Ovis Ammon of Pallas stands from four to five feet high, and measures seven